Barack Obama has weighed in on the divorce rumors surrounding him and his wife, Michelle Obama.
On Wednesday, the former president, 63, was this week’s guest on Michelle’s IMO podcast alongside her older brother Craig Robinson. As the “very, very, very special guest” walked onto the set, Robinson was shocked to see that the husband and wife “liked each other.”
“That's the rumor mill,” the former first lady chimed in, while Barack also joked, saying, “She took me back! It was touch and go for a while.”
“Now don’t you start,” Michelle started to tease her husband as her brother broke the tension by telling the couple, “It's so nice to have you both in the same room.”
“I know, because when we aren't, folks think we're divorced,” Michelle replied.
Michelle and Barack have been married since 1992 and share two daughters, Malia, 26, and Sasha, 24.
Over the last few months, there has been speculation that the couple is getting divorced due to their lack of public appearances together. However, when the former first lady spoke on NPR’s Wild Card podcast with Rachel Martin last month, she said she’s not photographed alongside Barack often because of their age.
“The fact that people don’t see me going out on a date with my husband sparks rumors of the end of our marriage,” Michelle said. “It’s like, OK, so we don’t Instagram every minute of our lives. We are 60. We’re 60, y’all. You just are not gonna know what we’re doing every minute of the day.”
The couple first sparked divorce rumors when Michelle did not attend Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Donald Trump’s inauguration back in January.
Speaking to Martin, Michelle defended her decision to skip the events, regardless of how the general public may have viewed it.
“One of the major decisions I made this year was to stay put and not attend funerals and inaugurations and all the things that I’m supposed to attend,” she said. “That was a part of me using my ambition to say, ‘Let me define what I want to do, apart from what I’m supposed to do, what the world expects of me.’ And I have to own that. Those are my choices.”
“Whatever the backlash was, I had to sit in it and own it. But I didn’t regret it, you know? It’s my life now, and I can say that, now,” she added.
